“The teacher,” he said, “try to make us read and write in Spanish, but we don’t care too much for that. We just play, play, play.” One game he remembered, looking back from his old age, was to take slender sticks in either hand and hold them as imaginary forelegs. Then, bounding down the road, the child Jacobo pretended he was a deer. It was a favorite memory of the old man who hobbled on canes.
